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Take the challengeIn Japan, they're putting down the golf clubs and welcoming in the sun!
During Japan's real estate boom in the 1990s and 2000s, an excessive amount of golf courses were built. Now unused, the country has a conundrum of what do to with all these abandoned golf courses?
Japan is aiming to double their renewable power sources by 2030. They've already been building solar power plants that float on water, and now they're turning their golf courses into solar plants too.
Kyocera Corporation announced the commencement of a 23-megawatt solar plant project located on an old golf course in the Kyoto prefecture. Hopefully it will be operational in September 2017, and generate a little over 26,000 megawatt hours per year. This will be enough to power approximately 8,100 typical local households. The electricity generated will be sold at a local utility.
According to Quartz, in May the company announced an even bigger project scheduled to begin next year in the Kagoshima prefecture on land that has been designated for a golf course for more than 30 years, but is now abandoned.
Hopefully to be operational in 2018, this 92- megawatt plant will include more than 340,000 solar modules and is expected to generate up to 100,000 megawatt hours per year, enough to power 30,500 households.
This has caught on in the US as well, plans to redesign golf courses as solar plants is happening across New York, Minnesota and other American states.
[Header image: Kyocera]
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